Japan 1874 Revenue - Rare?

Hi, I got this Japanese stamp, probably a 1874 revenue stamp. It's quite a big one! It's one of the few Asian revenue stamps I have and I wonder if it's a common one. Not sure about the stuff at the top, it seems another piece of paper was once on top of it. As usual with many of my stamps it's got some brown toning of the tips of the perf unfortunately, though for it's age it's not as bad as some of the others.

Very common, but fascinating stamp.
It is a hand engraved document revenue from 1873 .
Invoices and Payments
The black markings are cancellation "chops"

Shimomura catalogue is best for ID.
Listed in Forbin Catalogue, free on "Stampsmarter"

Search this forum for Japanese revenues for many queries on this item.

Shown at
Early Japan (?) ID Please here at SCF (Author PoStat4evR)
Dashed if it will come up on "search"

Try
https://goscf.com/t/57369&whichpage=3#501873 br /

Thanks Rod, very useful, will continue some digging.

Bloemzee - I started collecting Japanese revenues some years back after my first visit to Japan.. I have always been fascinated with the country, its culture, etc - and always had an interest in their stamps as well. When I discovered how inexpensive many Japanese revenues were, I decided to start collecting them. I've got a small collection of a couple hundred or so (some are just varieties) and I've spent next to nothing on them.

As Rod said, the Shimomura catalogue is pretty much the standard for Japanese revenues although you may have better luck finding a copy of John Barefoot's "Southeast Asia Revenues", which includes Japan as well. It's not as detailed as Shimomura but has all the more common issues. (There is also Hasegawa, which appears to be more recent, but is only in Japanese - and even though I can read some Japanese, I don't think I could use that catalogue without the constant use of a translator.)

Btw there are several issues in the design you posted, that is the most common but many interesting varieties exist as well!

Dear Bloemzee,

This is a very common, yet very interesting and attractive revenue stamp indeed - my favorite of all Japanese revenues.

As already mentioned by our expert members, it is from the last issue of the documentary revenue stamps; it has been categorized as the "4th Issue, electroplated-multiplicative printing" but Hasegawa in his recent catalogue (2019) has proposed to be as "5th issue, Multiplicative printing".

The original plate is hand-engraved (hand-etched), similar to other Japanese classical stamps. For 1 Sen, two (2) original plates have been engraved (Plate I and II). Using the original plates, multiple copies were generated using electroplating technique, which has been introduced to Japan then and has been also applied to print Koban stamps. This is the main reason that this 1 Sen revenue is so abundant and easy to find in the market today.

The earlier issues (e.g. 4th issue, perforated, foreign paper) were printed directly using the original plates, and has gutter width of 2mm, whereas the multiplicative issues has gutter width of 3mm, which could be used to distinguish the 4th and 5th issue stamps.



Two types of "foreign paper" (e.g. ordinary western paper) is listed in Hasegawa 2019 catalogue; normal paper and porous paper. However I have noticed other paper variations as well (such as ivory-colored paper, wove paper with apparent wove patterns) and am still investigating on this.

Variety of perforation could be found; 8 1/2, 10 , 11 (11L), 12 1/2 (or 13) and some combined perfs.



Etching varieties do exist, but relatively minor compared to those of earlier issues (especially the 1st issue on Japanese paper, rouletted). In addition to the well known variety in Plate II position 8, I have hitherto identified three etching varieties;






Hope this helps !

- unechan from Osaka, Japan

Unechan,
Thank you very much for your contributions to our hobby.
Don

Indeed, Unechan. Beautiful presentation.